Mick Fanning Wins 105k At The Hurley Pro Trestles

Mick Fanning puts the screws to Dane Reynolds to win the biggest first place check in surfing.

Earlier this summer Mick Fanning made the finals at the U.S. Open, and had a sniff at winning the largest first place prizemoney in surfing history, but he couldn’t close the deal. So it was only fitting that today, with Hurley adding five grand on top of that historic 100k, Mick Fanning would be the one to get the check.

Going up against an in-form Dane Reynolds (who had the two highest wave scores of the event), Fanning put on a contest surfing clinic in the final. It was a tricky 30 minutes of surfing, with a long lull kicking things off. Despite the lull Mick found a medium sized right and blasted a few vicious top turns for a 7.83. And then cruelly, it went flat again.

Finally a flurry of waves stacked up, and Dane logged a tenuous five, falling on the end of it. Then somehow he scrambled on to three more waves within a minute and a half but fell on two of them and only the third would end up as a keeper. In earlier heats he’d appeared sure-footed and deliberate, but in the final it seemed he just couldn’t find his rhythm. He later said he was cramping up before the final and was actually hooked up to an I.V. for some quick hydration.

A few minutes later another row of lines peaked up, and both surfers were able to catch a wave, then race back out and get another one at the end of the set. On his two Dane racked up an unimpressive 1.1 and a 5.77. Meanwhile, Fanning had ripped the gills off of his for an 8.5, and then a 8.9. That would leave Reynolds deep in combo-land. With just more than five minutes left, all the tail wafts and air reverse 360s in the world couldn’t get him out of the hole.

Still, it was good for the best result of his young World Tour career. With his third place finish at J-Bay, just before Lowers, Reynolds now sits just one spot outside of the top ten. “It was a good time,” Reynolds said. “You can’t win your first final, can you?”

In addition to winning the record breaking $105,000, the victory also shot Fanning up to second in the World Tour rankings. He’s now 936 points behind fellow Coolie kid Joel Parkinson, heading into the European leg of the tour.

And what of Kelly Slater and his quest for the record tenth world title? Slater got third today, quietly continuing is campaign. Although he’s still mathematically in the title hunt at sixth place, he’ll have to be near perfect from here on out, and Parko will have to get some 17ths or worse. Luckily for us and European Slater fans, he’s said that he will be heading over to the Euro leg of the tour.—Casey Koteen

Mick Fanning wins the highest prize purse in the history of surfing. Photo: English